IMO, Destiny is the perfect game to have a giant booklet comeback.

I don't have a lot of time for dime store video game tie-in novels these days. I don't mean to disparage the Halo books--I read them all, FoR more than once, and picked apart the fiction on community forums back in the day--but I hope that Destiny itself can sufficiently speak to the quality of the writing that Bungie is putting into this project.

I feel like this is an area where the Halo games didn't quite excel. Based on the novels, the universe seemed to be richly detailed and built from this huge pool of lore...a big sweeping space-opera with political machinations, ethically gray military projects, AIs that basically go insane after 7 years, characters like Halsey and more that we don't really start to hear about in the games until the latter part of the series. Maybe this is something the novels brought to the table and the games had to play catchup, but I don't think that's the case. I hope to see more of this in depth kind of stuff in the game itself, rather than having to glean it from third-party sources.

That being said, it's probably a safe bet there will be tie-ins. From what little tidbits of story we've got so far, Staten's bit from one of the past updates really sparked my imagination. I could picture a novel being written about the ancient-future history of humanity set prior to the events of Destiny. It kinda reminds me of the stuff about Traxus IV from Marathon.

The City wants us to recover a piece of Charlemagne, one of the great Warminds of the Golden Age—a vast machine intelligence built by the ancient Powers of Mars. The Cabal do everything they can to try and stop our descent, but we keep pushing, rifles cracking and Traveler energy boiling from our fists until the only thing left standing is us, and the only thing left of the Cabal is the loot they hid in Charlemagne’s vault.

Great Warminds of the Golden Age? Ancient Powers of Mars? Fucking sign me up.

I was thinking of Destiny and its marketing beyond the game. Destiny has had it's Cortana Letters of sorts with the Alpha Lupi thing. So what would be next? A book of course! Do you think Destiny will have its Fall of Reach. Will it have a book that kicks things off and informs us about the world and setting of the game? Should it?

I like The Fall of Reach but I think it sometimes is referenced too heavily in Halo's canon or it plain doesn't fit in any more. Any Destiny book has needs to avoid that.

If we did see a Destiny book what would you want it to be about?

I'd probably like to follow the first wave or Human explorers as they venture out after the fall. See them encounter the various aliens and be forced to form the Guardians.

How about you?

Bungie has said many times that we are the story. They've been purposefully vague on a lot of the details. I believe there will be little to no story activity outside actual game-play, even though "game-play" may cover a lot of ground.

If there are story elements or historical events to be revealed, I believe it'll be through the "softer" game portals (i.e. mobile apps) and not "old media" like books. I mean, how much fun was it to unlock the Destiny reveal riddles? How cool to learn back story through web events like I Love Bees or similar? Bungie's theme has been to build community, and solving story events together is a great way to get people to connect.

I realize tie-ins are a potential cash cow, but I don't think Bungie much cares.

Bungie have said repeatedly that you are the main character and have emphasised the customisation of the character and gear.

To that end, I absolutely would NOT want any characters in the books to be main characters in the game. I don't want inside access to huge galaxy-changing events and world-shapers - it takes away the mystery. I don't want my character meeting people in the game for the first time and being all 'who are you?' meanwhile I as a player know that character intimately from a book - that's a massive disconnect.

There is no point following a Guardian in a book since the player IS a Guardian in the game - and that sets up a hero outside of themselves. Anything a Guardian character might do in a book, it would be better to experience that in the game.

Rather, I would prefer stories that explore the lives and struggles that we otherwise wouldn't see in the game. It doesn't have to be grandiose - just engaging. Give us characters that help reinforce the idea that the last city is worth protecting.

Does that make sense to anyone?

I think if there's a lesson to be learned from the reception of Halo: Reach is that you can't be sure that when you trot out some details that used to be just for background from your franchise bible and flesh it out into a fully-fledged work, you can't tell when some of those decisions may come back to bite you in the posterior when you're trying to make a game later on.

There are, of course, two ways of dealing with that.

One is to forget about ancillary materials, and let the games speak for themselves.

Another is to resist the urge to make prequels, or to cover portions of your backstory in a game that have already been detailed in a supplemental work.

Of course, actualizing either of these require that you own and control your own IP.